Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21 Unveils Design Hub to Expand UX Services
The new offering brings together the company's design expertise into a single multidisciplinary team, introducing services such as UX audits, design-on-demand and embedded designers.
Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21, an African design and engineering software consultancy, has launched a new Design Hub aimed at providing integrated user experience (UX), user interface (UI) and digital design services to clients across Africa, Europe and the United States.
The new offering brings together the company’s design expertise into a single multidisciplinary team, introducing services such as UX audits, design-on-demand and embedded designers. The Design Hub is supported by more than 30 practitioners based in South Africa and Seattle, while also leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to improve efficiency and enable design specialists to focus on higher-value work.
“Technology is evolving as is the way people consume it, and clients’ needs – both from a product and application point of view – are evolving. To meet changing needs, the new Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21 Design Hub has combined our: user experience; user interface design methodologies, and our digital design, into one team that now evaluates all aspects. So rather than having just one person run an evaluation, it’s now carried out by a holistic team – all with different lenses and perspectives.”
– Dion Nair, CEO, Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21
The company said the Design Hub places a strong emphasis on user experience, noting that software projects often prioritize functionality while overlooking usability until after deployment. Through its UX audit service, the company evaluates live applications by testing customer journeys, identifying usability issues and recommending improvements without requiring direct access to clients’ systems.
“We often find the value of design, upfront, is underrated: executives may identify a business requirement and define what software needs to do to address it, but the actual usability of that software is not always tested in the market with their end users. A crucial part of design is understanding how you want your users to engage with the software while achieving business KPI’s or success metrics. We’ve seen companies investing heavily in building out a service or a feature delivered via an app or website, and then wondering why their usability hasn’t gone up, why the persistence across the journeys hasn’t increased. Only then do they start looking at design. Only considering design impact at this stage can be extremely costly. We identify who is the target population of the application and build out user archetypes, then our engineers test the various journeys within the client’s applications. We highlight potential areas of: improvement; failure, and even points of silent failure where the journeys do work, but not optimally. Importantly, this service does not require us to have systems access, so we don’t need to go through security or compliance checks.”
– Dion Nair, CEO, Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21
In addition to audits, the Design Hub introduces a design-on-demand model that allows organizations to access design expertise based on their specific project requirements rather than maintaining full-time design resources.
“While more organisations understand the value of design, they don’t always need access to a person or a team, 100% of the time. Often, they want a designer to fit into their cadence of software development. That might mean buying two hours of design time one day or eight hours of it another day. We’ve structured a capacity model that allows clients to buy from us the amount of design services they require, on a daily basis and across a period of time. We’ve also built out an efficient bespoke system to handle these workflows. Our onboarding process provides the team with detailed information and allows them to understand the client’s business requirements and development progress. We’ve also established certain gateways so that a senior designer signs off on pieces of work to ensure integrity and consistency.”
– Dion Nair, CEO, Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21
The consultancy has also expanded its embedded design service, enabling experienced designers to work alongside clients’ product teams throughout the software development lifecycle.
“Because digital transformation is not a destination, but rather a journey, a highly experienced consultant is embedded in the process, asking questions, seeking problems to solve, and helping clients explore the art of the possible. These designers understand the larger context of both the business and the environment, so their value goes beyond just design.”
– Dion Nair, CEO, Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21
According to the company, the Design Hub is intended to help organizations improve product usability, strengthen digital experiences and access flexible design expertise while supporting digital transformation initiatives across global markets.
